The United States is witnessing a heated debate about mail polling, which is scheduled to be used on a large scale to reduce the risks of an outbreak of Corona virus in polling stations in the upcoming presidential and legislative elections, but President Donald Trump objects to this proposal.
Trump believes that "voting by mail has proven its failure in a number of states, some of them are fraudulent, and the Democrats want to take advantage of Covid-19 to pass the elections by mail."
This prompted US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, on Sunday, to call on House members to cut short their summer vacation and return within days to Washington to hold a session to vote on a draft resolution aimed at protecting the postal service.
Pelosi said in a letter posted on Twitter that the draft decision prevents the Postal Service Administration from implementing changes affecting services that were in effect at the beginning of this year.
She explained that her decision comes after Trump's campaign to "sabotage" the elections by manipulating the postal service, and denying voters the right to vote, as she put it.
Pelosi stressed that the Postal Service is one of the pillars of American democracy and necessary to provide important services, including the absentee vote of millions of Americans.
Democratic candidate Joe Biden, Trump's rival in the upcoming presidential elections, has interfered on the crisis line. Condemning the position of the White House to vote by mail.
"President Trump continues to attack the US Postal Service, and now hundreds of thousands of veterans are not getting their life-saving drugs on time. He is despicable ... I promise you that as President I will never put politics on the care of the veterans of our nation," Biden said in a tweet.
Voting by Mail
In light of the registration of more infections with the Corona virus, and no vaccine or effective treatment for the disease, 46 states have so far agreed to allow the expansion of voting by mail.
According to the latest statistics published by the World Meter site, Corona infections in the United States increased to 5 million 575 thousand, while deaths exceeded 173 thousand.
The party affiliation of the state governors did not play any role in the issue of allowing the use of postal voting, and among those states 24 states are headed by a democratic governor, while 22 states are headed by a Republican governor.
Trump insists that some states' plans to vote by sending a ballot card to each voter is a prelude to what he described as a disaster, and he believes that this will lead to chaos, casts doubts on the results of the upcoming elections, and may delay the announcement of their results.
Democrats accuse Trump of appointing Louis Deguy as the new postal chief, with the aim of helping to block the mail vote.
Questions and doubts
Louis Deguy took over the management of the Federal Post two months ago, is known to be very close to Trump, and he donated money to his campaign in the previous presidential election.
This raises many doubts about his goals from the change plan that he adopted upon his arrival in his post, which focused on reducing costs by eliminating overtime hours and reducing the mail transport fleet, which led to a delay in mail delivery, and DeJoy also imposed a ban on any new appointments in the authority.
Democrats are concerned that the reduction in expenditures in the Postal Authority will affect the counting of votes, especially with an unprecedented increase in the volume of mail. However, DeJoy stresses that the postal authority has the ability to deliver all election mail safely and in a timely manner according to the required standards.
Senior Democrats of Congress called on the Inspector General of the Postal Service to investigate the amendments made by DeGoy, and the Democrats' call stated that "given the concern about the impact of the Trump administration's policies on the quality and effectiveness of the Postal Service, we request that you conduct an audit of all changes decided by Digoy and other officials in the administration." Trump in 2020. "
Louis Deguy rejects all accusations, and denied that any decision was taken in favor of Trump, stressing that the Postal Service does not delay the arrival of the election mail, nor any other mail.
It is noteworthy that the Postal Authority includes 497 thousand employees and workers in the United States, and there are more than 31 thousand post offices, with an average of 614 offices per state, in addition to 142 thousand post boxes, with an average of 2784 mailboxes for each state.
Last year, the authority achieved entries worth $ 71 billion, in exchange for expenditures amounting to $ 80 billion, meaning that there is a deficit of $ 9 billion. And the Treasury announced that the Postal Authority had been granted a $ 10 billion loan.
Trump's Arguments
In recent decades, no candidate who lost the presidential election has contested the election result due to the mail vote, and no previous candidate has accused the Postal Service of tipping the scales of one party over another.
Millions of American voters have also exercised their right to vote using the mail during every election since the outbreak of the Civil War in 1860.
In the 2016 elections, which Trump won, the percentage of voters who voted without going to the polling stations themselves reached nearly 40% of the total electorate, or 57.2 million voters.
The majority of Americans support the idea of voting by mail, especially amid the spread of the Corona virus. According to a poll conducted by the "Pew" Research Center last June, 65% of Americans expressed support for the option of early or absentee voting by mail, and demanded that it be available to every voter without requiring the authorities to present documents that support the reason for the need for this type of ballot.
However, President Trump is focusing on the state of exception in the primaries, in which he relied on postal balloting.
The experience of mass mail voting in the primaries in New York State revealed a long delay in announcing the results of some constituencies for seats in the House of Representatives race, which extended for weeks due to the lack of completion of the counting of postcards.
And in the New York City elections this year, 400,000 people voted by mail, while the number in the 2016 elections was no more than 23,000, meaning that there is an increase of 17 times.
And 80 days before the elections, 160 million voters were able to vote through the postal service, but what the Congress or the White House might take is unknown in a battle that the American judiciary might decide.